


Tell me everything's going to be okay

by MelindaCoulson4



Category: Lost in Space (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Making Up, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27615721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelindaCoulson4/pseuds/MelindaCoulson4
Summary: Immediately after 1x10. Maureen & John take a moment to just be until the next crisis hits.
Relationships: John Robinson/Maureen Robinson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Tell me everything's going to be okay

They had a 1 out of 5 chance of picking the most habitable option in this system. There would be no way of knowing anything about the planet besides general size and atmospheric makeup until they were already committed. And if the planet happened to be uninhabitable, well, it would be too late to turn around. Not that they would be able to anyway. Even now, coasting through empty space, they were running on red. When the time came, there might be just enough fumes left in the Jupiter's fuel tank for them to escape crash landing onto the surface of their chosen planet. And that was a pretty damn big maybe.   
  
The odds were stacked against them. All of their lives would be held to chance - to her best guess. It wasn't nearly good enough.   
  
The Jupiter's outer sensors wouldn't be able to pick up any data for another 15 hours at best. It was a waiting game. And her worst nightmare. To keep herself from losing her mind, she'd grabbed her whiteboard and got to work. The checklist was growing far too long. Before she had the chance to write one thing down another idea would come popping into her head.   
  
"Maureen?"   
  
Maureen shifted her attention from the whiteboard and over to John, who was staring at her expectantly. Clearly, he was waiting for a response from her, but she'd been too engrossed in her work to hear anything that he'd said. "Sorry. What did you say?"   
  
"Don asked if we wanted a break."   
  
"No, I'm good," she murmured, already preparing to write an additional bullet point on the whiteboard.   
  
_Inventory MREs_. The marker glided over the board. In her haste, the letters looped together sloppily, however they were still legible. Next: _Calculate amount per_ _seve_ -   
  
"It's gonna be 12 hours till we get anywhere near that planet. Not much you can plan for till then," Don said through a mouthful of something crunchy. "I promise I'll keep watch."   
  
She stopped writing. Her eye twitched. They didn't understand how much prep needed to be completed. Everything had to be set in place if they even wanted to think about surviving. "I need to be here to check the-"   
  
"Maureen. A few hours of rest. Then we'll start fresh. You'll be back here in plenty of time," John said.   
  
Preparing to shoot him down again, she rounded on him. The quick glimpse of John made her pause. His face was covered in scratches, bruises, and cuts. Breathing seemed painful. She could read it in the way his shoulders slumped forward and how his eyes fluttered every few minutes. He hadn't looked so worn down since that awful time period they'd experienced with Penny as a newborn and Judy as a three-year-old. There'd been no terrible two's, instead it had been Judy's torturous threes.   
  
She wondered if she looked half as bad as John did. Aches were making themselves known now. Before, she'd been lost in her mind, planning for their future. Awareness was coming back now and it hurt down to the bone simply sitting in her chair. It would feel nice to freshen up a bit. And now that she was thinking about it, she did have to relieve her bladder. She glanced out the wide bay window for some sort of excuse. Their closest possible destination was nothing but the size of a marble right now, just a distant speck of light against the shadow of space. It was so far away she couldn't even make out the color. Letting Don man the controls for a few hours wouldn't hurt anyone. He'd earned her trust by keeping John alive out on that piece of Jupiter 4. If he could do that, then he could take care of their Jupiter while it did nothing but float through space.   
  
She'd made a decision. "Alright," she acquiesced. Just an hour or two, she silently promised herself. The lucky whiteboard could wait. "Thank you, Don."   
  
"No problem. I've got my girl here for company," he said while gesturing to the chicken that had surprisingly sat vigil by his side for the last hour. It let out a cluck as if it knew he was talking about it.   
  
Maureen's eyes slid over to John's. He had a slight smile on his face after looking at Don and his chicken. Underneath the amusement she detected the relief he felt at the prospect of moving to a bed. Judy had looked him over and cleared him, but that hardly meant that he was okay. It had only been a quick scan of injuries. The numerous training simulations she'd put him through had to have strained his body in some way. She would have to remind him to have a more extensive check first thing after their rest.   
  
Carefully, she set the whiteboard to the side and met John at the back of the cockpit. John reached out and took her hand. It was warm and reassuring. She glanced at Don one more time, but he paid her no mind, nose deep in some manual he had on his lap.   
  
Walking in time with one another, the journey back to her bunk was made in silence. It was almost eerily quiet after all the excitement. The kids were asleep. The three of them had all passed out as soon as their heads hit their pillows.   
  
Being close to John already had her feeling better, but her worry increased tenfold when she caught him trying to cover up his limp. That's when she knew that she'd made the right decision. He needed to lie down immediately. The space outside of Will's room was empty. She'd become so accustomed to seeing the robot standing vigil that it seemed odd without it there. 

She made a move to walk through the threshold of her room, but was met with some resistance. She looked down as John released her hand.   
  
"I'll - uh be back," he said quietly, pointing over his shoulder.   
  
That’s when she remembered that all of his personal belongings were still in his own quarters. The place that she'd quarantined him to ever since thier first day aboard the Jupiter. "Okay," she said.   
  
By the time she'd finished up in the bathroom, John was sitting up in her bed waiting for her. He'd been sleeping in here ever since they'd come back from the tar pit. That was all it had been - sleep. By the time either of them had made it to her bed they'd been asleep before they could even think about doing anything else. They hadn't really had time to talk about what it all meant. For now they were just existing, one day at a time.   
  
Starting at the collar, she unzipped the top of her jumpsuit. That was the easy part. Taking it off was where she recently tended to run into trouble. It stuck to her body like a second skin and she had several scrapes spread all over her arms and legs from the HAB mishap. Mindful of her still healing brush burns, she peeled each sleeve carefully away. It was a slow process. The top came off without much hurt. When she got to her left shoulder strap that connected to her pants there was a flash of pain at her elbow. The surrounding skin had started to rip open the scab that was already there. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. The pain dulled to a throb and she was able to successfully unclip both straps. Already she felt ten pounds lighter.   
  
"Maybe we should talk about letting Smith out," John said, breaking the comfortable silence.   
  
With her suit halfway hanging around her hips, she froze in place. Her heart hammered in her chest. A chill ran through her. Smith could never be allowed to freely roam about their Jupiter or any other place. She would make sure of it.   
  
"No. Absolutely not," she told him, her tone unintentionally harsh. So much had happened. He had no idea.   
  
Maybe it was the exhaustion but he didn't seem to pick up on her distress. "What are we gonna do? Keep her locked up in a 10x10 room for God knows how long?"   
  
Yes, whatever it would take to keep that monster away from their family. Little did they know, they'd been living with a master manipulator ever since they'd rescued Smith from that diamond storm. Allowing her to sleeping only feet from their children. Eating their food. Listening to their conversations. Watching their every move. Learning ways to manipulate them.   
  
Maureen looked back at John. "That's exactly what we'll do," she told him. There was no room for argument on the matter. Smith was lucky enough to still be alive. There had been a moment after her discussion with Smith, where she sincerely thought about opening the airlock. But she was able to take a deep breath and reign in that blazing anger. Smith's only saving grace was the fact that she'd fired the harpoon the second time.   
  
John didn't know that Smith had taken control of the robot only in hopes of saving herself. That Smith had risked all their lives for her own selfish gain. It would've gotten John and Don killed if they hadn't aborted the mission.   
  
"If she was the one who re-fired the harpoon, doesn't that earn her some good will?" He posited.   
  
She could hear the lightness in his voice. The natural instinct for him to forgive was coming out. He always wanted to see the best in people. She could barely hold back a scoff. That had been the least that Smith did to rectify the situation. Maureen couldn't think of any circumstance in which she'd be okay with letting Smith out of her new prison. "The reason that you were stranded out there in the first place was because of her," Maureen revealed.   
  
"What do you mean?" His brows furrowed together.   
  
There was an old t-shirt of John's that she'd hidden in the back of her closet. She pulled it out and held it close. "While I was in the middle of transmitting to you, she knocked me unconscious and took me to the middle of the forest to help her reanimate the robot."   
  
All so Smith could have control of the robot. To save herself. God knows what she would've done if she'd made it back on the Resolute. Maureen lifted the shirt over her head. "When I came to she told me that you didn't make it to the Resolute." She could feel the tremors in her throat as she told him.   
  
"I'm sorry. He didn't make it," Smith had said.   
  
Just like that, her world had come apart. Those simple words had been like a fatal physical blow. After getting him back. After putting their family back together. After the two of them reconciling. After all of that, she thought he was gone forever.   
  
She may hate Smith, but in the end, she had no one to blame but herself. Because it would've been her own fault. The kids would've been without a father because of her reckless gamble. Getting that Jupiter up to the resolute was a risk, but she'd pushed him into it. Chose him for the job and immediately shut him down when he'd protested, then pressured him into doing it.   
  
"Maureen," he called.   
  
She'd zoned out again. Before he had a chance to see her falling apart, she quickly blinked her tears away and busied herself with pulling on her lounge pants. "Judy and Penny thought that they watched you blow up in that Jupiter," she told him. That was the final nail in Smith's coffin. She'd wounded the kids so deeply and unnecessarily by making them think that their father was dead.   
  
_"Mom, dad's Jupiter-"_   
  
“I know,” she'd interrupted, unable to hear the words from her daughter. That would've made it all the more real.   
  
Lip trembling, she sat on the bed without looking at him. The weight of his stare rested heavily on her back. Everything that they'd started to rebuild had almost vanished in the blink of an eye. She'd come so close to being left alone again.   
  
His hand landed on her arm, tugging her closer. "Come here."   
  
She slid to the head of the bed and slipped under the blankets next to him.   
  
"What's this from?" He asked, thumb brushing over her forearm. A line of discoloration decorated her skin. It had turned to a deep purple. That was where the rope had dug in.   
  
"Smith. She bound me to a tree." She'd tried to break free from the hold, but it had been too tight. 

At this point, what was another bruise to add to her collection? John took her arm and brought it to his face, kissing the spot with a light brush of his lips. His eyes grew glassy as he continued to stare at the marks on her body. She watched the muscles in his jaw jump. She turned completely towards him. Her hands settled on both sides of his face, calling him back to her. She breathed deeply, knowing he was here to stay. Their eyes met steadily. "I will never forget that Smith did that to our kids." She swallowed hard. "To you."   
  
His face was beat to hell with cuts and bruises. Some were old, but most were new. Tears formed in her eyes. The wetness trickled out and down her cheeks.   
  
He reached out, brushing the tears away before they could fall. "I'm not going anywhere," he promised with a solid determination that wasn't up for argument.   
  
A noise escaped her. It was something between a gasp and a sob. She’d been wanting to hear him say that for so long. Today she'd almost lost everything. John and Will to the depths of space. The girls in the chariot at the mercy of the robot. It was too much. More tears fell before she could even process it all. Her carefully constructed suit of armor crumbled away. Silently, he tugged her forward. She fell into him. The dam broke and she couldn't stop it. She was so tired of holding it all in for so long and putting on a brave face. Burying her face in his neck, she clung to him. "I'm sorry," she whispered.   
  
In the safety of her bunk, it all came out. Everything she'd been holding in for years, it seemed. Her anger at him, her wishes to take the kids away, her regret for the way she'd handled certain things. There were so many things she wanted to say.   
  
"I've got you. I'm here. I'm here," he soothed.   
  
For the first time in years, she believed him. 

//end//  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading


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